Make it the team's

The last step is the one that makes the assistant survive you. If only you can update it, it dies when you move on, and the team goes back to asking whoever inherits your desk.

Write the handover: a one-page document that says what the assistant is, where the documents live, how to update one, how to rerun the tests, and the monthly routine. Give another person edit access to the documents and the assistant. Walk them through one update. Then, the next month, let them run the routine while you watch.

When two people can maintain it, it belongs to the team. That is the point at which you have stopped being the person everyone asks, and become the person who built the thing everyone asks. It is a better job.

In practice. An EA who built her team's assistant went on leave for three weeks. Her cover, who had been walked through the routine once, updated two documents and fixed one wrong answer while she was away. Nobody emailed her. She said it was the first leave in six years where that was true.

At your desk. Write the one-page handover. Give one colleague edit access. Walk them through a document update and a test run. Put a note in your calendar to let them run next month's routine.

Write it down.

• My handover partner:
• Where the handover page lives:
• The date they run the routine alone: